Inventing Victoria

by Tonya Bolden

  “Never look back! It is excessively ill-bred.”

  PROCTOR’S RESORT

  “Back in Savannah you said that you could make me into someone who could help a lot of our people.”

  After breakfast Victoria and Dorcas Vashon had retired to the sitting room.

  “While I have been having a marvelous time, I fail to see how going to teas and dances, playing parlor games and such does anything for our people. In fact so many of colored society do not seem to care about the lowly.”

  The roses were in stunning display on this early June morning.

  “They care as they can,” responded Dorcas Vashon. “They have charities for the needy.” After a pause she added, “Patience, my dear. One does not barge into society. You are still a newcomer, an outsider. Give it time. Wait until you are invited to join this committee or that. Your time will come.”

  May it come soon, Victoria thought. “Aunt Dorcas, there is something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “Why were you so keen on my becoming friends with Fanny, Penelope, and Clementine? They are rather obnoxious.”

  “It was another test of sorts.”

  “A test?”

  Dorcas Vashon nodded.

  “A test of what?”

  “Have you become obnoxious?”

  Victoria laughed. “No, thank goodness, I have not!”

  “Bravo!” Dorcas Vashon then changed the subject. “Peruse the Advocate and decide where we shall spend some of the summer?”

  There was Myrtle Hall in Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, operated by a Mrs. W. B. Evans. A Mrs. Neal had a boardinghouse in Old Point Comfort, Virginia. Those ads left Victoria cold but not an item about a place in Rockville, Maryland.

  “Mr. Samuel Proctor has added to his Rockville home addition rooms sufficient to accommodate 30 persons,” said the Advocate of a house that stood high upon a hill. It boasted an exquisite view of the surrounding countryside, a cool spring, and a fine lawn, perfect for archery and croquet.15

  Victoria circled the article, showed it to Dorcas Vashon later that day.

  “Proctor’s Resort,” said Dorcas Vashon, skimming the item. “I have heard very good things about that place.”

  Proctor’s Resort it was.

  The sixteen-mile, one-hour B&O train ride to Rockville—past fields, past cows chewing the cud, past laborers swinging scythes—was delightful. So too the half-hour carriage ride from the depot up to the Proctors’ huge clapboard house with a wide wraparound veranda.

  They arrived near dusk, greeted by evergreen Chinese lanterns and hooded candles on the lawn. And by Samuel and Alice Proctors’ warm smiles.

  There were only ten other guests at the time, none of whom Victoria or Dorcas Vashon knew. And Victoria would not have it any other way. What a relief it was to be far away from society, from gossip, from boasts and brags.

  Then he came.

  PURPOSE IN HIS EYES

  He was a long, cold drink of water on a parching day.

  Victoria had seen him once, at a Fitzhugh soiree.

  “Who is he?” she had nonchalantly asked Fanny of the tall, angular young man with a razor-sharp mustache and purpose in his eyes.

  “Oh, that is Adgerton Mott’s nephew,” replied Fanny.

  “Can’t be!” gasped Clementine.

  “Why not?” asked Victoria.

  “Adgerton Mott could pass for white if he wanted to. That young man is black as coal.”

  “He is Mr. Mott’s nephew by marriage,” said Fanny, “not by blood.”

  That was another thing that vexed Victoria. So much talk about color. Light skin was cause for pride for so many, whereas it had always been a source of shame for her.

  While Victoria chanced glances at the tall young man with purpose in his eyes, Clementine asked her if she were as light as Adgerton Mott would she pass. “Some of my mother’s people,” the chatterbox went on to say, “moved to Massachusetts and became white. No doubt they live in fear of one of us seeking them out and letting the truth be known.”

  Victoria froze. What if someone from Savannah came to Washington, someone who knew her, knew that she was passing, as someone born into a good family as opposed to the daughter of a—

  Victoria stifled her anxiety by carrying on with the conversation. “Why would I want to pass for white?”

  Clementine’s mouth fell open. “You would have such an easier life!”

  “After all that they have done to our people?” Victoria then steered the conversation back to him. “Does he live in the capital?”

  “No, he is from New York City,” Fanny informed her. “His mother—no, his father recently died and left him some money. Not a lot by any means.”

  “His name?” Victoria asked, taking pains not to look his way.

  AND ONE DAY A KISS

  “Name’s Wyatt, Wyatt Riddle.” He tipped his straw boater.

  Victoria was sketching on the Proctor’s back veranda when he strode into view wearing beige linen pants and an open-collar white shirt. A windowpane-check jacket was slung over a shoulder.

  “Victoria Vashon. Pleased to meet you.” She gave him a small smile, felt a quickening.

  He bowed, shook her hand, kissed it. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “You have just arrived?”

  “Last night.”

  “We did not see you at dinner.”

  “I arrived quite late due to a train delay.”

  Victoria, feeling nervous, strange, just smiled, then returned to her sketch pad. Out of the corner of her eye she watched him taking in the view.

  “I swear this place is like a peek at heaven.”

  “Indeed. It is such a lovely spot.”

  Wyatt turned around, leaned on the bright-white railing. She could feel him staring at her.

  She wondered what he was thinking as she continued sketching, determined to be the picture of poise in her lightweight white cotton eyelet day dress with three-quarter-length sleeves. She loved that dress with its stand-up collar and tiny vertical pleats on the shoulder yoke as well as below the waist and around the hip. With its flowing skirt, such an easy dress to move in. It always made her feel cool, like a cloud.

  “Do you mind if I join you?” he asked.

  “Not at all.” There was a fluttering in her stomach as he sat in the white wicker chair next to hers.

  He stretched his arms, rubbed his hands. “May I see?” He pointed at her sketch pad.

  She handed him the pad. “I am not very good, it is just something—”

  He looked out at the rolling billows of blue-gray mountain ridges, then down at the drawing. “I am certainly no expert on art, but it seems to me that you have quite captured the mood. The clearness. The serenity.” He looked from the sketch to her. “The beauty.”

  Victoria found herself staring at his hands. “Capable” came to mind.

  “How long are you staying?”

  “Just for a week. Then I will be returning home.”

  Victoria feigned ignorance. “Oh, and where is home?”

  “New York City.”

  She could feel him staring at her again as she added a broad-winged hawk to her mountainscape.

  The day had begun in mist. After breakfast Victoria had gone for a stroll, all the while thinking about purpose, wondering when, how she could be of service to her people. Before she and Dorcas Vashon arrived at Proctor’s Resort she had read a frightful article about colored living in squalid alley dwellings, where children went about half-naked and died at an alarming rate. She had not seen that aspect of Washington.

  “What will you tackle next?” asked Wyatt after Victoria added the hawk.

  “I do not know as of yet. My aunt and I only arrived in the capital several months ago. I have not yet—”

  “I meant, what will you draw next?”

  Silly goose. “Oh, I don’t know …” She pointed east. “Perhaps that stunning cedar.”

  With the ebb and flow of small talk, with Wya
tt’s ease with silence, Victoria became convinced, as she savored the sun and crystalline air, that Wyatt was no ordinary man, especially after he astonished her with this question: “Would you do me the honor of having dinner with me tonight? Just the two of us. Out here on the veranda.”

  She was taken aback, yes, but at the same time deliciously thrilled. His straightforwardness was refreshing, attractive. He did not hem and haw. Seemed to have no weasel ways. He was clearly well-bred, but—

  There was something different about him. He did not care to impress and was not easily impressed or amused. Definitely he was not the type to suffer fools gladly.

  “I will need to check with my aunt,” Victoria finally said.

  Their solo dinner on the veranda, sweetened by soft breezes, led to more back veranda talk, to walks in the woods and to the spring, led to a picnic and one day a kiss.

  Hand in hand they had toured Proctor’s garden with its melons, tomato plants, pole beans, walking onions, and herbs. They had strolled through nearby woods. They had idled in a patch overrun by anemones, bluebells, oxeye daisies, and a host of other wildflowers. Victoria was gathering purplestem asters beside her when Wyatt took her into his arms.

  His lips were luscious.

  She yearned to have more of him, all of him.

  But that would not do.

  “We best head back for dinner,” she whispered, stroking his cheek.

  Was this love?

  Their time together was not all nonchalance and leisure, kisses and caresses. Wyatt was serious, always thinking. Victoria loved that.

  And Wyatt had plans. “Insurance company. As most white firms will not take our business, I say carpe diem! Turn an obstacle into an opportunity. I aim to create something more efficient than a mutual aid society.”

  Victoria’s heart went into double beats when Wyatt said that he planned to open his first office in Washington.

  “Why not New York City?” she asked.

  “North of the Mason-Dixon, Washington has the largest colored population and more colored people of means than any other city. Besides, my uncle has more connections here than I have in New York. I will need investors.” Victoria learned that Wyatt had definitely been doing his homework. A voracious reader like her, he had been gobbling up book after book on Washington.

  “When I am done with this I will pass it on to you,” he said one evening as they sat in the Proctor’s sitting room. She was reading The Portrait of a Lady. He The Gilded Age.

  “What is it about?”

  “The national capital. It was published some years back, but I am told that it captures Washington to a tee and that when it comes to corruptions and other shenanigans, the city has not changed much since Twain and a friend wrote the book.”

  “Mark Twain?”

  “None other.”

  “Then it must be wickedly funny.”

  Wyatt smiled broadly. “It is.”

  Wyatt was strong, bold, had a mind of his own. He seemed able to tackle any subject.

  From the death of Jesse James—“No honor among thieves,” he remarked.

  To the hanging of Garfield’s assassin—“I could never support the death penalty, especially when someone is clearly insane.”

  And there was the more recent death of Mary Todd Lincoln, and Thomas Edison’s Pearl Street Power Station—“I have read that this power station will provide electricity to a square mile of homes and businesses in lower Manhattan.”

  “Do you think this electricity will really work? I’ve not read that much about it, but it sounds so strange. Light without fire?”

  “I think it will work. I think electricity will be part of our future.”

  Wyatt had already told her that he would only be gone about a month. “If I can wrap things up any sooner, I surely will.”

  “You promise?” she had asked with a winsome smile just before she pulled back her bowstring and let fly an arrow.

  Bull’s-eye.

  “I promise.”

  Calm and collected when speaking on most subjects, Wyatt became very worked up about the new immigration laws. “After how many Chinese men—hundreds—died building the transcontinental railroad, now they ban them from entering the country.” Wyatt frowned. “Sign of the times if you ask me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you read about the lawsuits people have brought over accommodations? There is one against the Memphis and Charleston Railroad—”

  “Oh, yes, the Robinsons.”

  “And in New York against the Grand Opera House.”

  “As I recall there are a few more cases of challenges to the color line being drawn.”

  “Trying to make whites abide by the Civil Rights Act.”

  “That was when?”

  Wyatt rubbed his chin. “1876. No, 1875.”

  “Pray God they succeed.”

  “I hope so but I am not that confident. There is something in the wind. I think we need to brace ourselves. True, we have a handful of lawsuits against discrimination, but I have heard of a boatload of instances of colored denied a hotel room, made to ride in a baggage car, barred from an orchestra seat, instances that did not result in a lawsuit. People simply swallowed the insult.

  “I have been told that here in the last year several dining saloons have stopped allowing us in,” said Victoria. “Unless it is someone like Frederick Douglass.”

  “Perhaps the day will come when Washington will no longer be the colored man’s paradise.”

  They were seated on the steps leading down to the spring with its bright green reeds and small boulders. They watched as the water bubbled and eddied.

  Victoria sighed. “We have produced a Frederick Douglass, a Daniel Murray, an Orindatus Simon Bolívar Wall, not to mention your uncle. And in your New York City there is the caterer Peter Downing, whose brother George has that fine hotel in Newport. I read somewhere that they are worth about $250,000.”

  “Your point?”

  “There is ample evidence that if given half a chance so many of our people can amount to something, rise, contribute to society. It is so galling!”

  “Until more of them get right with God we will always have to be twice as good to get half as far.” Wyatt brightened. “But then we do have a talent for making a way out of no way.”

  Though a realist, Wyatt was such an optimist, always walked in the light. And there was his absolute lack of appetite for gossip! He never had an unkind word to say about anyone.

  And honesty. Wyatt was so committed to honesty. Victoria learned that the day before he left for New York.

  “I want you to know that I am not here by happenstance,” he said as they took tea on the Proctor’s back veranda.

  Victoria returned her potted salmon and watercress sandwich to its plate. “What do you mean?”

  “I came here on purpose. For you.”

  “For me?”

  “A few weeks back I saw you at the Fitzhughs’ soiree.”

  “Were we introduced?” Again Victoria feigned ignorance.

  “No, but the minute I saw you … well, I continued to observe you.”

  Victoria had a hard time looking Wyatt in the eye. She reached for her cup of tea.

  “I knew instantly that I wanted to get to know you. So I made some inquiries. When I learned that you had gone to Proctor’s Resort I lost no time in booking a room.”

  “Wyatt, you are certainly—”

  “Certainly what?”

  “I do not know—”

  “I am merely being aboveboard, thought it best to be honest. Just as I aim to run an honest business I have always run an honest life. So I wanted you to know that I sought you out. Know, too, that when I mean to do business, I do business.”

  “Oh, now I am business, Wyatt?” she teased.

  He tapped her nose. “Yes, Victoria. My heart’s only business.”

  ALL MY GOOD COLOR?

  The month seemed a year.

  Easing the ache was a telegr
am every few days.

  “THINKING OF YOU—TOO MUCH!” … “THE WRAPPING UP IS GOING QUICKLY. CANNOT WAIT.”

  Victoria lost no time in replying.

  “DREAMED THAT WE WERE AT PROCTOR’S RESORT. SKETCHED THE SPRING.” … “HURRY!”

  The night before Wyatt’s return, Victoria was a wreck.

  She worked herself into a near panic imagining the train running off the track. Of Wyatt’s affections cooling, of—

  What should she wear?

  The simple white poplin with high lace collar?

  The cream organza dotted with bouquets of violets?

  She tried on several outfits before finally settling on the bright-rose silk walking dress with rows of lace up the front. If they did indeed decide to go for a walk, she would top it off with her white chip hat trimmed with Spanish lace, pink-velvet ribbon, and a modest pink feather.

  Oddly enough, Victoria slept very well that night.

  The following day was a slow drip. Victoria did her level best to busy herself. Reading. Needlework. Sketching. Reading.

  By three o’clock in the afternoon she was glued to a bedroom window seat.

  Waiting.

  As a stream of boys on velocipedes sped by.

  As a tall, stern-looking man wearing a bowler hat a bit small for his head tapped his cane on the pavement every other step.

  As a Western Union messenger knocked on a door across the street.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Waiting.

  Thinking about how far she had come. Truly a world away from Forest City. If only Ma Clara—

  Never look back! It is excessively ill-bred.

  Waiting.

  When the sun went shy, it took her back to her early days in Baltimore when she felt so lonely, when—

  Never look back! It is excessively ill-bred.

  Waiting.

  Then not waiting.

  Victoria jumped up at the sight of Wyatt turning the corner. She rushed from her room, caught herself at the landing. Quickly she returned to her window seat. She picked up a book along the way.

  Waiting.

  For the doorbell to ring.